Who's painting the country red? Must be Trump

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By Grady Means, opinion contributor
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President Trump thinks the Democrats are socialists, or worse, and suddenly it's a huge irony that states that have gone Democratic are painted blue and those that have gone Republican are painted red. It should be the other way around.

Independents caught in the middle are still purple - or maroon, I guess, because maroon is a mix between red and blue, but mainly because they are literally marooned with no party, cable network, social media, or even friends to turn to.

Suddenly, politics is all about color. For example, now, green is the new red. Many Democrats have signed on to the Green New Deal, a re-education program to force the United States off fossil fuels in 10 years to prevent the end of the world. Never mind that Al Gore predicted New York would be underwater by now; this is the real deal. Grab your bibles and head for street corners because the end is near.

So, this green thing would outlaw fossil fuels for energy generation, autos and trucks, airplanes, farm equipment, manufacturing, shipping and home heating. And forget about nuclear energy - that's totally off the table. So, no air travel, today's cars are suddenly worthless and new fleets of very expensive electric cars and trucks must be designed and built. We'll have massive new expenditures in trains and urban transit for large and small towns, and between all towns and to Grandma's house - suddenly, it's a worker's, sorry, walker's paradise!

Because solar and wind are expensive and unreliable, energy costs could rise 10-15 times, as would related home heating/cooling and food and consumer goods and everything else that's transported. Corporate competitiveness would evaporate, unemployment would skyrocket, people would freeze and there could be mass starvation, and the U.S. economy would collapse faster than you can say Armageddon.

And fire up the congressional investigations because, with the United States out of the oil market, the global oil leverage and blackmail capacity of Russia and Middle Eastern terrorists would be back in high gear. Talk about Russian collusion.

And, of course, blue is the new red, when it comes to health care. Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and many others want Medicare for All. That will mean massive new demand, rationing, exploding costs in the trillions of dollars, and then, the complete collapse of the U.S. health care system. Russia and China could not have designed a better plan.

And, of course, red is the new red: Wealth taxes, public takeovers of corporate boards. It would crater investment, lead to business failure, skyrocketing unemployment and civil unrest. It's all so cool, so Bolshevik, so 1917, so red. Don't worry about failing schools; no one needs to work. The government will guarantee everyone an income, even though "unable or unwilling to work." And don't worry about filthy cities. It's all fully organic.

Even rainbows have a red tint. Intense identity politics, multiculturalism, diversity and hair-trigger hypersensitivity have made it so that the left is caught in endless circular fighting over the smallest lapse or microaggression.

It has all become so colorful and crazy that only one person could be behind all of this: Trump.

What a clever way to bring down the Democrats for good and get re-elected. I mean, follow the money. Trump must be the one funding Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her progressive ideas that probably are driving Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) crazy. We've heard it whispered that sources close the president say he's the shadow contributor behind the campaigns of all the Democrats for president. Some even claim he's flying them all to Iowa, free of charge, on Trump jets. Who else could have created such political chaos?

It's such a clever, fiendish plan that it must be frustrating the Democratic Party leaders because they understand Trump's painting them into a small, red corner, and Democratic hopes for 2020 could go up in smoke.

It's time to storm Mar-a-Lago with an FBI team to stop Trump before he destroys the evidence - his can of red paint.

Grady Means is a writer and retired corporate strategy consultant. He was special assistant to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller for domestic policy in the Ford White House, and was an economist and policy analyst for Secretary Elliot Richardson in the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1971-73.